Tablet Life

Kindle collections on my tablet (one of my happy places in tablet life) – Photo © 2017 by V. Nesdoly

Tablet life is swipable
expandable and squeezable
pushable and snappable
all at your fingertips

Clickable and searchable
tap and type and drawable
a workout for your head and hands
but not the best for hips.

© 2017 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)

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Do you own a tablet (or smartphone—that might be even worse)? Have you fallen under its spell, so that you can’t be without it out let it out of your sight? I must remind myself of the truth of the little ditty above when I’m tempted to linger too long with my very fun, versatile, addictive but sedentary tablet.

This post is linked to Poetry Friday, hosted today by Tara at A Teaching Life.

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A little screed against progress

A little screed against progress

New car plays no CDs
camera has no download cord
it’s all Bluetooth and Wi-fi
and I’m feeling pushed toward

a world controlled by passwords
where music’s streamed, not owned
photos float on virtual clouds
and my attention’s honed:

delete the fake-bill email
ignore the mystery link
report the phishing trial
and with suspicion think

of all my cookie fragments
drifting through the air
as a trail of bread crumbs
for the thugs of ransom-ware,

increasingly uneasy
that someday I’ll be hacked…
The internet-less past
was safer—that’s a fact!

© 2016 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)

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It’s not that I don’t like progress. The internet has brought many positive changes to my life which  would be very different if I suddenly found myself wi-fi-less.  However, in our rush to do everything online I sometimes get the uneasy feeling, especially on days when news of another mass hack circulates, that we’re all rushing toward a cliff.

This post is linked to Poetry Friday, hosted today by Carol at Carol’s Corner.

 

Ink Jet Printer (NPM ’16-Day 17)

Photo – pixabay.com

Ink Jet Printer

Printer fires up, then silence
thinks awhile, then putters…
pushes out the paper
in chugs and grunts and sputters.

We would mutter too
if we had his hard assignment:
Make the picture colorful
while staying in alignment.

As he complains and stutters
charges in his nozzle heads
are giving chip instructions
to make purples, greens and reds,

figuring out precisely
magenta, cyan, black
adding drops of yellow.
Get it right—can’t take it back!

I’m glad he knows just where to put
each microscopic bubble.
Dear Ink Jet, grumble all you like
we love you for your trouble!

© 2016 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)

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This children’s poem was inspired by the topic of ink jet printers at Wonderopolis. I learned a lot about printers through the Wonderopolis informational article—including why mine may sometimes need a little sympathy and patience.

 

I Read Nothing

The collections on the Kindle App of my iPad (Photo © 2016 by V. Nesdoly)

On my snazzy e-book reader
I load volumes by the score
fantasy and tomes of how-to
poems, fiction and memoir
books of travel and adventure
wondrous places to explore!

Have collected them for years now
by the hundreds three or four.
But what’s starting to amaze me
despite all these books galore
is my reader isn’t getting fat
and weighs not one ounce more!

Is my reader full of nothing
is it real—my large book store
this that occupies for hours
with best sellers and encore,
where I’ve always one more book to read
not bookless as before?

You can have your softback novels
over heavy hardbacks pore
sniff the ink, caress the vellum
hound of paperback hardcore.
Of my weightless nothing e-books
I’m a fan forevermore!

© 2016 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)

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Oh dear do I hear a collective groan on seeing another NOTHING poem? Sorry about that. But all the nothing poems read in the past few weeks hatched ideas for more. This one I couldn’t resist.

And please know that I am not trying to provoke a dust-up between paper and e-book loyalists. This is written tongue-in-cheek.

This post is linked to Poetry Friday, hosted today by Tricia at Miss Rumphius Effect where the welcome mat is out. Drop by for links to all kinds of delectable poetic fare.

 

Katniss’s Dilemma

Therapy Chair – Photo by Laura Purdie Salas.

Dentist’s office?
Therapy gym?
Or Capitol creation
that tears limb from limb?

© 2013 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)

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In the land of Panem, it’s not only the Hunger Games arena that is hazardous with booby traps!

This is my response to Laura Purdie Salas’s 15-words-or-less image/poem challenge (“Man or Machine?)  from yesterday (December 5th). It’s linked to Poetry Friday, hosted today on Life at the Deckle Edge by Robyn Hood Black, one of PF’s divas of haiku.

 

Blog Gremlins

Months and months of work
an index linked with care
hundreds of blog posts
I’d find each one from there.

One day its permalink
I clicked to make a change
before my startled eye
not only rearranged

but totally replaced
and in its place the page
I had been working on!
I was in shock, enraged

I back-clicked, pressed “Undo”
closed, exited and feared
re-opened, fears confirmed
my index disappeared.

Who ate my bits and bytes
exchanging them for prose?
Wait till I meet those nerds
I’ll punch them in the nose!

© 2013 by Violet Nesdoly (All rights reserved)

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This poem is written for the November 30th prompt: “Write a disappearing poem. Simple as that….”

The event described above really happened to me. I write a daily devotional blog and had made index pages on my Blogger blog (Old and New Testament) linking each post under its  Bible book in chapter order. One day when I went to update that page with the URL of the piece I had just written (in my usual way) my index was gone, entirely replaced with the post I had just been working on! How that happened I have no idea.

Fortunately I had saved that Blogger index page some months earlier as a Word.doc and was keeping it updated (sort of). I have since taken the index pages off the site, so the gremlins no longer have access to them (I don’t think…).  And of course the ‘punch in the nose’ bit is all in fun and in the service of rhyme. I know, it’s hardly in keeping with the “turn the other cheek” attitude the Bible tells us to have.

AND WITH THIS POEM I COMPLETE THE NOVEMBER CHAPBOOK CHALLENGE.

I DID IT!!! I wrote 30 new poems this month.